Young Writers Society

i never got the chance to ask if we could wait for each other,

but i’ve already committed myself to slowly watch the world burn

as i wait for you.

fire is nothing but enduring.

my patience is the flame on top of an endless wick.

after all, lighters and candles

are how we domesticated fire.

all i have is smoke and ash from what we once were

but couldn’t continue to be.

i’ll be fine while waiting, but it’d be nice to

engulf you in the blaze of my arms and see your face again.

i’m saving my heart for you to look at

like how i stare at the bonfire

(it’s pretty, warm, and just the right amount of destructive.

everything i love about you).

i’ll let you be mine if we’re allowed to be each other’s.

~~~

neither of us will just get over it.

we aren’t kindling that burns hot and fast,

our flames aren’t extinguished that easily.

maybe we are a slow burn, but we aren’t defined

to what “maybe”s we attach to ourselves.

you have potential to be my forest fire

and no potential, however small, is wasted.

i didn’t put my whole heart into your hands

for you to take home and light aflame,

but i wish i did.

i wish we flickered into existence sooner,

but we would have been put out sooner, too.

instead my love reaches into the past

and makes a place for you to roast.

~~~

it doesn’t hurt because i was burned,

it hurts because someone had to put out the light.

i mistook all the sparks i had in childhood for flames,

but i finally found out what it meant to burn with you.

i thought i was so different writing about auburn eyes

because i wouldn’t dare to be cliche.

but i realized your eyes aren’t the ocean’s floor,

they are the tip of a two-thousand degree torch.

~~~

for as long as i had carbon monoxide poisoning,

i never forgot my hallucinations.

your shine in my memory is becoming a dull glow, though.

i try to find some semblance that you burn in the present,

but everything is eventually brought to smoke by the past.

yet, matter is neither created nor destroyed;

i can never completely forget you.

it’s hard to forget someone who left a singed branding mark on my life.